


Master Class

by Destina



Category: White Collar
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-02
Updated: 2011-06-02
Packaged: 2017-10-20 00:36:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/206933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Destina/pseuds/Destina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peter had been insufferable since he learned to pick pockets.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Master Class

**Author's Note:**

> For Waldo's prompt of _an old, well-worn photograph_ , combined with Aces' prompt of _mutual competence kink_. Gen, with a hint of Neal pining. (It's about as slashy as the show itself.) Huge thanks to misspamela for a speedy and excellent beta!

Ask a hundred con artists to list the essential tools of the trade, and most of them would mention the intangible: a charming smile, a pretty face, a way with words to sweep the mark off their feet. Neal knew, though, that success was all in the hands. The lightest touch, the most delicate flex of the fingertips, and miracles could be accomplished.

Some would say the knack of a steal was in the wrist, but Neal didn't agree with that, either. The real skill was found below the last knuckle, in the most sensitive part of the fingertip. Neal thought of his hands as intricate machines, kept flexible with practice and intention. He imagined he had extra joints in those tiny millimeters, enabling him to maneuver the thinnest of papers with a practiced touch.

Neal was grudgingly impressed by the fact that Peter had great hands. In fact, Peter had been insufferable since he learned to pick pockets. For a solid week, he dipped into the pockets of total strangers and triumphantly extracted cell phones, wallets, lipsticks, loose change, and all manner of random items. (Neal turned a blind eye the day Peter dipped surreptitiously into Diana's pocket and came up with a slender tampon. It was all worth it, just for the embarrassment lighting Peter's crimson face.) Once a successful retrieval was over with, Peter placed the items right back where he found them. In some ways, he was better at dropping them off than picking them up, to Neal's endless amusement.

There was a line, however, and Neal drew it the day Peter slipped those talented fingers into his jacket pocket and came up with a piece of lint and a receipt for his trouble.

"Really, Peter?" Neal eyed him, a pitying kind of stare, which was really more than Peter deserved. "Are you so interested in the contents of my lunch you just couldn't ask?"

"Shut up," Peter said, stuffing the receipt back in Neal's pocket, its wrinkled edges protruding limp and used from the top, as if to protest their ill treatment. "I have to stay in practice."

"Oh? Planning a heist I should know about? Need some pointers?"

Peter's eyes narrowed. "You're just jealous I turned out to have a talent for the things you've held a monopoly on."

And really, that was just too much. Neal sighed heavily. "Talent might be overstating things just a bit."

"You think so? Bring it, Caffrey. I can take whatever you can dish out."

Neal smiled, which always had the effect of making Peter rise to the challenge. "All right then, let's make it interesting. So far, you haven't managed to take a thing from me without my knowing." At least Peter had the good grace to look taken aback at that. Good. He needed to be set straight. "So let's make a bet, shall we?"

"What kind of bet?" That was his Peter, ever suspicious.

"You take five things from my pocket without me picking up on the lift, I owe you dinner."

"A nice dinner," Peter amended. "Some kind of meat. And expensive beer."

Neal resisted the urge to point out that most of what he paid for was underwritten by ill-gotten gains because this was an interesting game, and he was all for it. He also resisted the urge to point out that expensive beer was almost a contradiction in terms. "All right. But you only have a week. One week, and then the deal ends. And you owe me..." Neal looked around. "My own office."

"I don't even have my own office!"

"You'll think of something, mastermind." Neal patted him on the shoulder. "So do we have a deal?"

"Deal," Peter said, and the light of challenge in his eyes was irresistible. That was the problem. Neal needed to be able to resist Peter, but he never could.

**

Once the game was on, Neal quickly got used to Peter's hands sliding all over him, a rough but effective method of picking that most people wouldn't notice. Neal, however, exacted a vicious glee from slapping Peter's hand away, or grabbing his wrist and removing his hand from the various pockets it had crept into.

The crestfallen look on Peter's face was worth the price of admission.

"Try harder," Neal urged him. "Practice more," he advised, on the second day, and knew that Peter wouldn't get one wink of sleep that night, heeding that advice.

On the third day, he slipped something special into his left jacket pocket, a little nugget for Peter to chew on. He knew when Peter lifted it, but he pretended not to feel the lift. Besides, it was expertly done; those twelve hours of lost sleep showing on Peter's face had paid off. Peter deserved to be rewarded for his perseverance.

The gilded sliver of wood wouldn't mean much to anyone but Peter, and Neal had hopes of seeing even more shadows on Peter's face the next day.

The fourth day, he added a piece to the puzzle, a few cryptic words scribbled on the torn edge of a post-it note. This time, he buried it in his back pocket, and waited to see if Peter would try for it after all his other pockets had been mined and found empty.

Peter was still telegraphing everything, every movement and intention, with his body. Neal derived great pleasure from watching him work in his normal job, but this...this was something special. All day, Peter was calculating, devising angles...and then finally, five minutes to six, as they were heading into the elevator, he made his move.

Fingers, sliding so carefully along the curve of Neal's ass that he could only feel the phantoms of them, not the true weight and warmth of them. He ducked his head to hide his smile as Peter pocketed his treasure. Exponential improvement in two days. He really expected nothing less from Peter Burke.

That night, Neal was working out his insomnia by painting only the corners of a Matisse, when his cell began buzzing. Peter's voice, rough with exhaustion, made Neal smile. "Are you trying to tell me in your not-so-subtle way that you pulled the Feldt Museum job? The one where all the paintings in the ugly frames were replaced?"

"Really, Peter. Do you think I would target a museum just because the frames were an aesthetic affront to art lovers everywhere?" Neal touched up a couple of brush strokes, then said, "Ugly is in the eye of the beholder."

"And you beheld a room full of it," Peter said, in that strange tone of admiration mixed with horror.

"Shouldn't you be out snagging wallets from tourists?" Neal asked, and hung up.

The next morning, he brought Peter coffee. It only seemed fair. In return, Peter effortlessly swiped the tiny coin secreted in the bottom of Neal's pants pocket. Watching Peter turn away with a smug smile on his face gave Neal a shiver of delight from the base of his spine, so the least he could do to counteract that was to lift his coin back.

He waited until after lunch, and had just tipped it into his palm when Peter sighed and said, "You know, I was working on that. Research takes time. Your recapture is premature."

Neal tilted his head and regarded Peter with fresh respect. "You noticed that?"

"Give me some credit," Peter said, and held out his hand for his prize.

Neal dropped the coin back into his palm and sipped his cappuccino, ignoring that attractive air of smug victory surrounding Peter. The day was pleasant, blue sky, women in pastel sundresses like so many flowers sprouting from the concrete in all directions. "What do you think your research is going to tell you?"

"Nothing I didn't already know," Peter said. He polished off his coffee and added, "That's three. Come on, master thief, let's get to work."

They did have some sort of case that week -- a jewel thief and a string of what were essentially petty larcenies -- but Neal had much more important things to worry about. Namely, what to put in his pocket the next day.

"You find the strangest ways of entertaining yourself," Mozzie said that night, staring while Neal collapsed a piece of origami into a flattened, angular pancake. "What's worse is, the Suit seems to find it amusing too."

"He's good at what he does," Neal said, trying out the drop in several different locations, until he settled on an inside jacket pocket.

"Sure, but does he have to be good at what you do, too?" Only Mozzie could make it clear he thought Neal was insane, without actually saying the words.

"Now that is an interesting question, Moz," Neal said, poking the pancake until it was well-seated in the pocket. "But I think a little turnabout is fair play, don't you?"

"Maybe if you wanted to be a fed," Mozzie said, moody to the end on that particular topic. "Do you want to be a fed?"

"Semantics." Neal put the jacket on the hanger, satisfied with his preparations.

The next time he saw it, the little camel was unfolded and standing on uneven, wobbly legs next to Peter's coffee cup on the conference table. Neal blinked at it, then automatically tapped his pocket. He didn't even try to keep the surprised look off his face. Not only had Peter successfully lifted it, Neal hadn't noticed.

"That's four," Peter said, without looking up from his file.

Technically, it was two, but counting wasn't the point, anyway.

"Don't feel bad," Jones whispered to him, as Neal doodled bowls of fruit on a yellow legal pad during a briefing. "He always has to be the best at everything. It's not personal."

Neal hid his smile. Never in the history of the FBI had any statement about Agent Peter Burke's motivations been so spectacularly wrong.

The fifth and final test was a folded photograph tucked into the inside breast pocket of a particularly tight vest, beneath a slimming and attractive jacket Neal picked up at a vintage shop. He gloated internally over Peter's calculating appraisal the next day, and made it his business to stay at least ten feet away from him at all times, which raised a few eyebrows in the office.

"Lover's quarrel?" Diana asked, arch as ever.

"On the contrary," Neal said, leaning closer for a more confidential reply. "He can't keep his hands off me. That's the problem, actually."

"There are worse things in life than being groped by Peter Burke," Diana said, a statement which was both accurate and frightening. Neal had an idea that if he asked how she knew any part of that to be true, she'd make him regret it forever, so he let it drop.

His plan was working well until Peter followed him into the unnaturally crowded elevator at lunchtime, and jostled a few people into shifting themselves around and changing the rigid spatial configurations of elevator etiquette. That was how Neal found himself pinned into the corner, Peter's hand sliding under his jacket, down his torso, in a very efficient but unsettling search that was nothing like the brisk frisking Peter was known for.

"There might not be a future in crime for you," Neal said, holding Peter's gaze as Peter slipped the top button of the vest and worked his fingertips into the pocket.

"Subtlety isn't always the best choice." Peter never broke his gaze, even as he retrieved the photo and palmed it. Then he leaned back, and Neal exhaled the breath he hadn't realized he was holding.

"Peter? I noticed that time."

"Guess I owe you dinner, then." Peter tugged Neal's rumpled vest back into place.

"No office?"

"Dinner." The doors dinged open, and with a small smile, Peter followed the herd out into the lobby.

Neal stood there a moment, contemplating the parameters of success, and then followed him.

**

As it turned out, Peter buying dinner amounted to steaks cooked at Peter's house while El was in St. Louis on business, and Satchmo waiting for his own chance to show off his superior thievery skills. The steaks were delicious, the beer on the higher end of the scale, and Peter even waited until after dinner to produce the old, well-worn photograph from his pocket.

"I didn't have to research this," Peter said, handing it back. "Your parents?"

"Just something I've been carrying a while." Neal folded it neatly down the whitened crease and set it on the table.

"Are you ever going to tell me the whole story on your father?"

Neal smiled and took a sip of his beer.

Peter leaned forward, and said softly, "One way or another, you'll tell me. Eventually." He picked up the photo, a reverent touch, something shared and returned. "I know you, Neal Caffrey."

Neal drank his beer in Peter's house, with Peter's watchful eyes measuring every move, and thought -- not for the first time -- how much he wished that were true.

 

end


End file.
